Competition brings like-minded people together and creates a robust community where people feel like they belong. It’s about socializing with fellow fans, showing team spirit, and sharing that experience with friends and family.

And, with benefits like increasing user engagement and retention, it may be an easy decision to incorporate organized competition in your mobile game. But it’s harder to know where to start.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind when including competitions and tournaments in your game:

1. Think about the smaller screen

On a smartphone or tablet, users naturally have less real estate due to the smaller screen sizes. If you already have a successful PC game, for example, avoid the temptation to take the PC game as-is and put it on mobile. Redesigning the experience to work for touch and smaller screens will ultimately create a much better player experience.

2. Design for a global audience

Competitive gaming is a worldwide phenomenon, so consider optimizing your game for any player, regardless of their physical location. Think about localization, time zones, and digital prize delivery in order to include worldwide participants.

3. Keep competitions fun by grouping players with similar skills

To help make your competitions feel fair to the players, place users into tournament cohorts based on their skill level. For example, you may want to create a tournament that only allows players with a certain top score, location, or possession of a specific item. Test out different approaches and see which ones create the most fun environment for your players.

4. Unleash your community with user-created tournaments

Allows friends and family to easily challenge one another with user-created tournaments. You could restrict invites to in-game only, or allow users to share a link to invite others to play against them. These user-created tournaments bring friends and family together to share the gaming experience, ultimately adding more people to the community around your game.

5. Have fun with prizes

Reward your players with in-game and real-world prizes. We recommend giving many customers in-game prizes to reward them for participating, and awarding special, limited in-game prizes to top performers. You can also award players real-world prizes, like t-shirts that feature game IP.

6. Make it easy for participants to share their performance

Make it easy for your players to share their results with others. After all, competitive games are all about building a community. So, let participants share their results on social media with their friends, family, and followers. This will also help engage non-players and promote your game to potential new players.

Learn more with our free eBook

Want to learn more about competitive mobile gaming? Get our free eBook titled, "Developer First Look: Competitive Mobile Gaming." You'll read about who is watching and playing competitive games, types of organized competition, and more.